Bicycling, Pastoring, Leading

Fear the Lord

Proverbs 15:3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, Watching the evil and the good.

Patty, my wife, is easily spooked. If she is standing at the sink doing something and I walk up behind her and say “Hi”, she will scream, jump, and act like I did it on purpose. My response is usually something like this, “I guess I could hang a bell around my neck so that you would know where I am at”. Patty’s lack of awareness of my presence is a problem that most Christians have with God. If God were to manifest His presence and say “Hi”, most would jump,out of their skin. But if quizzed these same Bible believing Christians would answer, “God is everywhere, and He is certainly here right now”. So what we believe in our head doesn’t necessarily mean that we really know it. The phrase “Fear the Lord” is used a lot in the Bible, and there are over a dozen significant promises given to those who really do fear the Lord. My favorite one is “the angel of God encamps around those who fear the Lord”. The starting point in fearing God is to be aware of His presence. You know He is with You, sees everything that you do, hears everything that you say, and knows everything that you think, as much as if you could actually see Him. When this is true in your life you will live life more carefully because you want to please Him, you live life with more confidence because you know He will take care of you, you live life with more peace, with more joy, and with a growing sense of worth and value because if God is with me and watching me 24/7 I must be pretty special. How does a person go about growing in the fear of the Lord? Read your Bible every day, and spend time with God in prayer every day. The simple discipline of reading the Bible 15 minutes every day and praying for 15 minutes every day will result in a steadily growing “fear of the Lord” in your heart. It is almost January 1st, make this your main goal for the new year.